Best posts made by Coin

@Arkandel
Less creepy and more expected. People have been deceiving friends and family regarding their relationships and whether they have them for years.

I once dated a girl for a while who, when we met, told me she had a boyfriend that she lived with, etc. Eventually, our relationship grew and I realized that that "boyfriend" had somehow vanished into the ether, faded into the background, gone. He had never existed, but I had fallen in love and was a bit in a haze (and pretty young at the time), so it had taken me time to notice.

It was only a matter of time before they marketed it.

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

Going back to work this morning. On a Monday morning. When it's going to be the hottest day of the summer so far.

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Coin A Mage knowing if something supernatural is up with someone, even if it's ambiguous exactly what, is very valuable. It would be comparable to being a cop who can see "CRIMIINAL" tattooed on criminals' foreheads if he squints his eyes at them. I imagine any smart cop would be squinting at everybody he meets, perhaps even not while on duty.

Liker I said, it's subjective. Some Mages got a shit ton to do already without being distracted by every little thing. I know my Mage on TR would never have had Mage Sight up constantly--that shit was annoying and he had other crap to concentrate on.

@Luna said:

@Usekh How do you say it? In my head you're use-kay. I'm almost sure it's use-kuh but I can't make that happen.

I always thought it was more of a you-sekh, with the kh having a hard g or j sound, a la Russian.

@Arkandel said in Alternate CoD/WoD Character Growth / XP Systems:

@Ganymede What I never understood is what the objective of having linear spends was. What was they hoping to get by it? Simplicity? Because it's not that hard to explain you spend '<x> XP per dot' to raise a stat to <x>, surely.

It just... makes no sense. Learning first aid is easy, reading a few books on biology is harder, going to medical school is harder still... all the way to becoming a world-class surgeon which is pretty damn hard. Why make each step cost the same? It's counter-intuitive.

In the real world, each one of those steps has exponential results in your understanding of a thing. Because the 1-5 ratio is meant to be an abtract representation of (in your example) knowledge, and each dot is mechanically and mathematically worth exactly the same when it's time to roll dice (each die has the same exact chance of coming up a 10 as every other die, and each die can produce the same exact variety of results as every other die) it is perfectly justifiable that the costs for each of those dice, separately, be the same.

You can agree or disagree, but this is a perfectly all right way of looking at it. In fact, when talking about Skills, the most valuable dot is always the first one, because it's worth more than the others, due to unskilled penalties (the first dot of Social and Physical Skills is worth 2 dice, while the first dot of a Mental Skill is worth a whopping 4 dice). (Amusingly, or perhaps logically, the first dot of an Attribute is also the most economic one, since it's free!)

So for example, if learning first aid is worth 1 dot, then reading a few books in biology might be worth 2 dots, and going to medical school might be worth 3 dots--but the way the system works mathematically, you're only slightly better at Medicine than you were when you just had first aid (and not even 3 times better, since you have to take your Attribute into account, which lowers the percentage of worth of the following dots, which in fact makes each following dot be worth less overall, if my rudimentary understanding of math is correct).

It's not as simple as 'getting better should be harder' when the theoretical progression is not mirrored and represented by the mechanical progression.

Choosing to do away with diminishing returns for higher levels of a trait implies a recognition of the trait's mechanical and abstract worth, because the system assumes that the storyteller and players are smart enough to recognize this.

This isn't, necessarily, a better way of doing things, since obviously there are preferences otherwise, but your argument against it is flawed.

God fucking dammit. RIP, Alan Rickman.

@Thenomain said in Alternate CoD/WoD Character Growth / XP Systems:

@Coin points out that theme and system need to match or confusion ensues. Ten points HR Puffenstuff.

It would also be nice if Mu*s used more of the skills, or challenged characters with them more. Like, you know, Drive. Ever.

Ask @Quibbler, I have in the past made people roll Drive quite a bit. >.>

@tragedyjones said:

Best casting possibly ever: Benedict Wong cast alongside Benedict Cumberbatch

He's amazing as Kublai Khan on Marco Polo.

@Arkandel, it is a leap when doing barbell squats or whatever the fuck you weirdo lifting healthnuts do is a commonplace event, and doing something that earns you something as specific and important to your society as Glory is... well, specific and important to your society. So, at the risk of repeating myself, yes, it is totally a leap. Or at least, it's too much of one for me to just handwaive.

It is my hope that we will have enough plot to go around. It is my hope that people won't need to request Renown scenes, because werewolf plot (and metaplot) will give sufficient chances for werewolves to be fucking awesome, as they should.

So we'll see!

Today, Great Big Sea.

@Arkandel, my main issue is that Vampire isn't necessarily about "learning Cruac", even if you are an Acolyte. But the majority of Werewolf, its core theme, is The Wolf Must Hunt. It is that hunting that becomes Renown. So as the person deciding this, I have to find a way to strike the balance between letting people advance with minimum actual activity that would warrant it, and getting people to actually put forward the effort to play the game they apped a character into.

If all you're doing as a player is putting your werewolf in a bar and posing taking shots, then you're not really playing werewolf, and thus your rise in Renown becomes hard to swallow for me. If all you are doing as a player is having wild monkey TS in your Haven, then you're not really playing vampire, and thus shouldn't expect to rise in Status.

I get that Status and Renown are different in some fundamental ways, though, which is why I am putting so much thought into ways to ameliorate the situation.

As a teacher, I can tell you that some of the differences that modern communications make are instantly and irrevocably huge. Cell phones have pretty much changed the entire school landscape. In my country, cellphones didn't become even an inkling of a thing until maybe 12 years ago, and certainly not a thing every kid was almost expected to have until maybe eight years ago, or maybe even less. I'm 31, so I was out of high school (and in a different country) when it all started...

I teach now. I look at my classes and I wonder: if we had had cell phones back then, what would it have been like?

And then I stop, because we would have been so much worse, y'all. This generation of high schoolers think they're crazy, but they... they ain't. They just ain't.

@Ganymede

If your only reason for eschewing alternate systems is "I don't think that's right," then I don't think you're giving the suggestion due consideration.

I guess you missed the upteen times I mentioned trying to find a solution that achieves a compromise, then.

@Luna said:

@Coin Isn't it a rule teachers aren't supposed to use ain't? Did yall have pagers? We did and one of us had a sweet Zak Morris cellphone. I had a phone with 200 minutes by my senior year. Enough time to call the parents with total lies about where I would be.

Ain't no rule no wheres what says I cain't use "ain't" if I damn well please, young lady.

No. We didn't have any of that high-brow shit. I went to high school in South America, even in my city, which is fairly up to technological snuff, it wasn't until the mid 00s that kids started getting their own cellphones more often than not. I'm sure there were exceptions before then, but they were exactly that.

@Arkandel, I can just as easily ask "who benefits from ANY sort of regulation as to Experience spending? Who benefits from any regulation in a game at all? Why have rules if someone doesn't benefit from them?"

That's a philosophical question. Who benefits from having wait times to buy things? Etc, etc. It may be a question that you find fundamental when it comes to pondering regulation policy on a game, but at some point you have to decide one way or another.

And you know, sometimes, the answer is 'the game benefits', because those regulations will ensure the people playing are the people who want to play the themes of the game published, with people who share that desire.

That said, I'm not saying the rules for Eldritch will be draconian to the point of driving others away, which I think I have made abundantly clear by repeating it over and over that I want to find a compromise.

@lordbelh
Weirdo Scandinavians.

This is what I do, mentally, as it is.

My Bump in the Night character, for example, has a few defining moments:

• He divorced his wife (amicably) when she realized she was gay.
• It led him to leaving town--and his daughter--which he's remorseful of, for her early years of life.
• His entire posse died recently and he alone survived (hel-lo, survivor's guilt).

And then I started playing him, and...

• His dad and grandfather were brewers, that's why he brews his own beer at his pub!
• His dad cheated on his mom with another woman--that's where he got his little sister, whom he adores! And why loyalty is important to him, but conflicting--after all, disloyalty got him one of his favorite people.
• One of the people who died was his best friend, and his sister's ex, which involves her and makes her invested in the whole vengeance angle--they have a common drive: revenge.

So at least half of his defining traits came post-CG, and they built organically and aggressively.

Of course, BITN doesn't even require a background, so I could do this easily.

On The Reach I pretty notoriously had the shortest backgrounds. Like, a paragraph. Like I literally tended to write more about my character's past in a single set pose reminiscing some shit from his childhood to justify why he was at some playground at three am getting high than his entire background.

You know. Shit like that. This is a good idea, especially if you allow additions later on.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@ThugHeaven said:

Mad Dogs on Amazon is pretty damned good too! I'm about three episodes in good acting and story.

Ever seen Terriers?

It's by the same people and on Netflix. It's a one-season wonder, but it at least has a decent ending.

Terriers was awesome. I always describe it as Veronica Mars' Drunk Uncle.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

See, I liked that I could take extra Kiths if I wanted a little extra something.
<snip>
So... meh to 2E Changeling. Looks more like they're taking -away- possibilities with the shift in Kith/Seeming rather than opening them up.

Agreed. While I'm interested to see how it plays out, the Dual Kith thing seemed to open up a whole world of variation that was kind of fun, if I could get past the victim origin story in Changeling.

I'm still not sure how a change from "Kith A always belongs to Seeming B" to "Kith A is different depending on which Seeming you combine it with" is less varied. Not to mention we don't actually know if they're getting rid of Dual Kiths, or maybe changing it in some way, or keeping it, or whatever.

Anyway!